I had a fall of my bike 1st Novemeber and shattered my patella and elbow. I'm now 9 weeks post-op and slowly recovering ( i think ). My knee doesn't feel like mine and is still very painful and i hardly have any range of motion. The Doc tells me recovery is going to be a 12 month process and he believes i will be able to ride again. I was wondering if anyone in this forum has ever broken their patella and successfully returned to cycling ??

with that injury there is nothing stopping you riding again. once the fracture is united you can go for it. its only pain after all by that stage.once the fracture is solid, i would start gentle ex. bike work.raise the seat a bit higher than normal to make bending easier and do not be worried about a full revolution. work on improving your range .

it may take a month or two to regain enough range to do a full revolution. other influencing factors not mentioned include type of repair (ie in a straight leg brace or surgery plus ROM brace, age etc etc

there are also other complications that may arise as you recover such as patello-femoral pain. worry about that if/when it happens...

It's roughly 5 months since the accident and i;m glad to say my recovery has been slow but positive. I've had no major setbacks and everything has been moving in the right direction which i so pleased about. I was signed off the physio last Wednesday and told to continue what i'm doing with my exercise regime.

Since the 3 month mark of my recovery i have been in the gym 5-6 x week working on regaining my leg strengh and have been cycling 2-3 x week. I have managed to regain about 50% of leg strengh to date but it continues to get stronger by the week. My muscle mass in my quads and glutes are also getting back to some normalised appearance.This morning i cycled 40km and even cycled up Hepburn hill (Hillarys) which i think is a 5% gradient...all quite slowly of course (still can't ride out of the saddle yet)I'm so happy just to be back out there and hopefully over the next weeks/months my strengh and endurance will improve enough where i can get back into some group riding.

I had the wires and pins removed from my elbow 3 weeks ago (fractured my elbow at the same time) but the pins and wires in my knee are not sceduled to be removed till 19 November. Once there gone i will have 2-3 weeks off, then hopefully i should be back to my old "normal" self.

It's coming up on 3 years since my shoulder dislocation and I thought I'd take some time off and see how it went, but I think I'm going to have to get back to the gym at least once a week to maintain and probably 2x a week minimum in the short term to get back to where I need to be.

Good on you for doing the work required to get the strength and range back.

My patella was smashed to pieces 18 months ago. I couldn't do full spins on the exercise bike for months due to internal scar tissue setting like concrete around the patella. My quad became tiny. During my physio sessions I would sit on an exercise bike doing 1/4 turns. Every time I reached the limit of movement I had to push to try to break down the scar tissue. Man, that was miserable and painful.

When they were happy that the patella was set i had surgery to remove the wires that were circling and cris-crossing the patella. At the same time they did Manipulation Under Anesthesia to break down the scar tissue. As far as I know, this is using force to break it down. The surgery report said they forced it to the point where it was audibly breaking.

My knee was on a continuous movement machine for 2 days following that surgery, set at 125 degrees. Since then I've been able to do 120 degrees and am back riding again. My quad is still a few cm smaller than the other one. I can do 70kg single leg press reps so it's fairly strong.

So yeah, with work and patience you can get back to riding from a patella break.

malnar wrote:Good on you for doing the work required to get the strength and range back.

My patella was smashed to pieces 18 months ago. I couldn't do full spins on the exercise bike for months due to internal scar tissue setting like concrete around the patella. My quad became tiny. During my physio sessions I would sit on an exercise bike doing 1/4 turns. Every time I reached the limit of movement I had to push to try to break down the scar tissue. Man, that was miserable and painful.

When they were happy that the patella was set i had surgery to remove the wires that were circling and cris-crossing the patella. At the same time they did Manipulation Under Anesthesia to break down the scar tissue. As far as I know, this is using force to break it down. The surgery report said they forced it to the point where it was audibly breaking.

My knee was on a continuous movement machine for 2 days following that surgery, set at 125 degrees. Since then I've been able to do 120 degrees and am back riding again. My quad is still a few cm smaller than the other one. I can do 70kg single leg press reps so it's fairly strong.

So yeah, with work and patience you can get back to riding from a patella break.